Britain’s Lloyds Banking Group apologized on Sunday after many of its debit card customers were left unable to access their money following a server hitch.
The financial institution, Britain’s largest retail banking group, later said that it had fixed the problem which left customers of its members banks — Halifax, Lloyds, Bank of Scotland and TSB — unable to use their debit cards or automated teller machines (ATMs).
“We apologize that earlier today, between 3pm and 6pm, some customers were unable to complete their debit card transactions,” a tweet from Lloyds Banking Group read.
“Although the majority of transactions were unaffected, we are very sorry for the inconvenience that this will have caused,” it said.
“At the same time, some customers encountered problems at approximately half of our 7,000 ATMs. This was resolved by 7:30pm, and all of our ATMs are now working,” it added.
TSB chief executive officer Paul Pester earlier also took to Twitter to apologize for the glitch.
“I’m working hard with my team now to try to fix the problems,” he said, explaining that two of the seven servers used to process the bank’s debit card payments had malfunctioned.
“It’ll take a while to sort the backlog,” he added. “Sorry. Customers may have problems for an hour or so.”
IT problems have recently plagued UK banks.
Shortly before Christmas, a technical fault meant about 750,000 Royal Bank of Scotland customers were unable to use their credit and debit cards. The RBS chief executive later said the bank had neglected its technology for years.
The Financial Conduct Authority has been scrutinizing the resilience of all banks’ technology to address concerns that outdated systems and a lack of investment could cause more crashes.
A software upgrade gone wrong in June 2012 cost RBS £175 million (US$286 million) in compensation for customers and extra payments to staff after the bank opened branches for longer in response.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day